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Sunday, June 8, 2008

I wanted to get out of the city and ride a rural route. So I instigated a ride to Granville with some riders I met last summer. Seven people showed up, which surprised me because of the threat for rain. We left from Gahanna (route info from GPS later) and headed east on Clark State at a slow pace. We continued to head east for about 10 miles and decided to turn north toward 161. We crossed 161 and had to portage onto the new 161 which is closed to auto traffic. At that point technology, a godsend, turned on the ride. I pulled up the radar and it looked as though the rain was about to hit us. So four of the riders decided to head back for a 20-25 mile ride. Tricia needed to head back anyway since she was driving to Cleveland in the afternoon.

We rode east on the incomplete 161 and had to portage onto a access road. We headed north and hooked up with Jersey Mill Road. The Marathon in Alexandria was the next stop. There were a lot of cyclists out. The temps were in the 80's but the humidity was really high. Back north to Jug St Road to head west all the way across to New Albany. We wound our way up to the Hoover Reservoir. The park has absolutely NO water available. For a busy park I was disappointed that you cannot fill a water bottle anywhere. A pit stop at a gas station was our water stop.

North through a neighborhood and we hit Smothers and turned east. There is a little climb up to Schott Rd where we turned south and rode the rollers to East Walnut. Lee brought us to Ulry. We rode up through Little Turtle and left onto Cherry Bottom. I hit 30mph on the flat before the hill and continued above 20mph until the light. I waited for the others and they passed me at the intersection at Morse. I got to the light a few hundred feet behind them and had bust through the intersection as the light changed to red at 25+ mph. I was starting to get tired at that point. We continued south and then turned up through Columbus Academy and through the neighborhood streets before ending at David's.

48 miles. 15.2mph average. Very humid. I felt like I was ran over by a truck after the ride. I don't think I drank enough water.